Wish Upon a (Fallen) Star
by Grym
Summary: When a dangerous case forces Chloe and Trixie to spend Christmas Eve at a safe house, Lucifer has his own ideas about what needs to be done in time for Christmas. [For the "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" Secret Santa Fic exchange].


**Wish Upon a (Fallen) Star**

 _(or, The Devil's Christmas Wish)_

* * *

Author's Note: For CloudXMK and the wonderful "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" Secret Santa Fic Exchange. My very first fic exchange ever! Small milestone.

I tried to work in a little Lucifer whump just for CloudXMK who seems to share my taste for such things, but this is as far as the Christmas spirit would allow me to go. The request was for Lucifer, Chloe, Trixie, and Dan (who gets a bit of short shrift here) and the keyword prompts were "Christmas Tree" and "cabin." Hope you like it!

Many thanks to Kamots, ye olde hubby, who gave me the idea for the Devil's Christmas Wish, some improved humor, and fixed my most glaring errors.

* * *

Chloe first noticed Lucifer watching her with more than his usual half-puzzled, half-hopeful attentiveness when they were sent on stakeout to, of all places, "Candy Cane Lane" (aka Acacia Street) in El Segundo. The neighborhood of lavish homes sparkled with sheets of carefully hung colored lights, lush swags of holly and pine, and even boasted a closed court for some suddenly-employed actor in a Santa suit and fake beard. Families and couples roamed the gleaming evening streets, unconcerned by traffic and unaware of the potential murderer that might have gone to ground in his ex-wife's empty home, the only patch of darkness left in the festive holiday display.

Lucifer sat in the passenger seat of their unmarked police sedan, an unopened packet of Cool Ranch Puffs forgotten in his lap. He had been unusually quiet that evening, offering only a few snarky remarks about the "Christmas electric bills of the rich-and-famous" and some half-hearted grumbling about how humans got this holiday all wrong. Sensing his dour mood, Chloe had given up on needling him about the Lux version of Christmas decor—a stripper pole "tree" decked with garland that was being put to rather risqué use by the nightclub's dancers. (He had been deeply unamused by Maze's joking addition of a fire-charred angel tree topper with its wings clipped. Chloe wasn't entirely sure it warranted such a strong reaction, but she'd learned quickly to not bring it up if she wanted her partner to be useful and not peevish.)

After nearly an hour of silence (no enthusiastic munching, no sudden tang of ranch spices filling the vehicle, no salacious suggestions about car sex, no dry criticisms of the children bouncing along the nearby sidewalk), Chloe glanced away from the darkened home to find her partner's eyes fixed on her. A string of vivid orange lights twinkled just beyond his window. The ambient light from the displays cast half of his face in shadow, but she could still see the furrow of his brow and feel the weight of his strangely sober regard. She gave him a quick smile and turned back to their task, only to look again ten minutes later and discover him still staring.

A third glance shortly thereafter had her sighing and raising her eyebrows at him pointedly. "Lucifer, what?"

He blinked, twitched as if startled. "Detective?" Even his voice sounded a little raspy, unused, as if he hadn't expected to speak—which was entirely unnatural for Mr. Ongoing Inappropriate Commentary.

"What's wrong? You keep staring at me."

"You said to watch that perfectly boring house," he answered, recovering with a flutter of fingers in the direction of the empty and unlit home just beyond. "I can't help that you're in my line of sight."

She narrowed her eyes at him, curious now. "I thought you didn't lie."

Shifting in his seat, Lucifer looked away. "I don't lie." He sounded a little petulant and defensive, like a child caught with his hand in Santa's cookie plate. "And how long must we sit here waiting for some would-be-minion—"

"And likely murderer," she interrupted, articulating each word.

"—to emerge out of his hidey hole? I mean, once again we're spending rather a lot of time in a car, alone, in the dark, and the windows aren't even a little bit steamy. My reputation, Detective! Even Maze and my obdurate brother have a better track record than this." Warming to his topic, he cut his eyes over at her, the tip of his tongue sliding along his bottom lip.

She quelled him with a glare. "So, lying _and_ deflection. What is up with you tonight?"

Their perp, naturally, chose that moment to burst out of a garage door and bolt around the house. Awkward conversation ended abruptly in a holiday chase through merry families, glittering trees, tangles of rainbow lights, and the occasional animatronic reindeer. By the time she made the arrest, kneeling on the guy's back to cuff him almost beneath Santa's booted feet, she was out of breath and had badly scuffed her palms on the cul de sac asphalt. Lucifer helped her up, brushing his thumb gently over her torn skin, but she barely noticed, her thoughts already on the hours of paperwork ahead to connect this case to the larger task of taking down Ray Mancini's whole murderous operation.

* * *

The next time she noticed him staring was almost a week later, as she explained away the purpling bruises over her left cheekbone to her alarmed daughter. "It's nothing," she said, trying for breezy and confident and unconcerned even though her entire head ached and her sinuses felt numb. "I had to get just a tiny bit more forceful with a bad guy than I wanted, but you'd better believe that he came out much worse than I did!"

She'd smiled, trying not to wince at the memory of the tire iron that caught her across the face and sent her hard into the concrete garage floor. While she was stunned, Lucifer had done something that dropped their suspect in his tracks, the enormous man howling in terror and pissing himself. That kind of thing had been happening more often, lately, and Chloe was grateful, even if Lucifer refused to share his methods with her.

When the placated child was tucked cozily into bed with her uglydoll, Lucifer was studying her again from the bedroom doorway with that same somber, speculative expression. His evening visits to their apartment had also become increasingly common since she'd moved in with Mazikeen, and he often hovered nearby when she was making sure Trixie got to bed. It always amused her to see him look so uncomfortable with their family rituals, so relieved that the sleeping child wasn't trying to hug him, and she suspected he sometimes listened to the bedtime story with badly disguised curiosity. But tonight, his frown of concentration was disconcerting, the planes of his face in the nightlight's soft glow looking almost like a stranger's.

"You okay?" she whispered as she slipped past him on her way to the den where the Christmas tree glimmered with white lights.

"Fine, Detective."

Something in his voice—just a hint of darkness, a flattening, an unexpected colorlessness—made her turn back to look at him. He seemed almost like himself, crisp tailored dark suit, fitted plum shirt, the square of a matching pocket handkerchief not even askew despite the incident at the garage. But his eyes glittering in the reflected tree lights were too wide, too dark, somehow more lined and ancient than usual. She assumed he might have been a bit shaken, after all, and reached out to brush his cuff softly.

"Here. Come sit a minute before you go home."

He nodded once, following. She pressed a wine glass into his hand, and they drank in companionable quiet, discussing the next steps in the case in low voices and even laughing a bit at Maze's efforts to make her own personal additions to this Christmas tree, too.

Chloe dropped her voice, conspiratorially. "I told her that peppermint-striped dildos were not part of our Christmas traditions. And certainly not tree ornaments! Not even if Trixie _didn't_ know what they were and thought they were funny-looking."

Lucifer sank back into the sofa, his eyes appraising the tree as if imagining Maze's sex-toy ornaments."The flavored ones _are_ fairly festive. Some of them even spin. Or so I've been told," he said with a smirk.

"Of course they do." How often could she roll her eyes before they got stuck? Apparently, she was determined to find out someday. "Do you know when I asked her to help us 'trim the tree,' she pulled out a dagger and asked, completely serious, 'what kind of trim? Brazilian?'"

Lucifer snorted. "You'd only need two ornaments then," he offered. "Just be grateful that that it's stockings she's hung from the mantle this time. Though, perhaps she simply got confused about the whole 'chestnuts roasting on an open fire' thing."

Laughing quietly, Chloe pushed her hair back with one hand. "You warned me living with Maze might be challenging. But, honestly, she keeps me on my toes. Where on earth does she get these ideas?"

"Nowhere on earth, I'd think," he said, a little more subdued again, staring up at the ceiling. "Christmas isn't quite the same kind of affair where she's from."

"Yeah, I get that." Chloe sipped her wine, watching him over the rim of the glass. Her friend, who claimed he was the devil, and whom she was fairly sure had intended to kiss her over a makeshift meal in his penthouse a few months before. They'd been interrupted, of course, and she still wasn't entirely sure how she felt about it. Intellectually, she recognized that her partner was probably bad news, a playboy nightclub owner with delusions of both grandeur and profound evil. (I mean, the devil schtick never let up.) But she felt comfortable around him these days, despite his "Luciferness." Maybe living with Maze's knives and bondage gear was changing her perspective on normality? "I'm the King of Hell" suddenly didn't seem quite so weird or worrisome.

If she was entirely, brutally honest with herself, sometimes she hoped he might try for that kiss again.

She kicked him out after a second glass and a few too many elf innuendos, but mostly because she needed some sleep if she was going to connect tire-iron guy to the Mancini gang after tonight's debacle. When she and Lucifer left the guy in the hands of their late back-up, he had been babbling in a kind of incoherent, drooling panic, unable to even look in her partner's general vicinity. Getting him to testify against his boss in that state? Unlikely.

Yawning and touching her cheek gingerly as she headed for her room, Chloe hoped the swelling and bruising beneath her left eye would subside before morning. Dan and the new Lieutenant were already arguing that she should back off this case for her own safety. This new little injury wouldn't help matters.

* * *

A few days later, Lucifer started to ask her something while they stood in the forensics lab waiting on Ella to finish a tox screen for a crime scene blood sample. They watched the tech literally boogie around her lab, singing along with Trans-Siberian Orchestra on her headphones, hips rocking, hands waving, and occasionally muttering about how the fake snow mixed in the sample was interfering with her scan. "But I'll get what you need," she chirped, darting out of the lab in search for some esoteric bit of scientific gadgetry. "Give me a few minutes!"

Lucifer had seemed fidgety and distracted all day, tapping his fingers against his trouser pockets, checking his phone every few minutes, and staring at her with an un-Lucifer-like brittleness in his eyes when he thought she wouldn't notice. Once Ella vanished around the corner, he turned to her suddenly, one hand lifted to get her attention, and took a deep breath as if to say something urgent.

Then stopped. He snapped his mouth closed and sighed, looking aggrieved.

"What?" she asked again with an edge of exasperation, his nervous tension beginning to rub off on her. "What, Lucifer?"

"Nothing, Detective," he answered quickly. A strained pause. "I just —" Cutting himself off, he gritted his teeth, then tried again. "I just wondered—"

Ella whirled back into the lab, beaming with excitement. "Look, you guys, you're not going to believe what I found! You can arrest Mancini on this alone! We've got him! Good job, guys!"

Chloe felt Lucifer's gaze flick over her once more then fall away, felt something strange and even momentous shattering in the wake of the tech's exuberant interruption. What was going on? She'd ask later, after there wasn't a multiple murder case to solve.

If there was time.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, there wasn't.

Between tying several cases worth of evidence to the Mancini operation, arranging for complex testimonies at gangster's trial, making sure Christmas shopping sort of happened (thank God for Amazon Prime) and that Maze and Amenadiel both remembered that tying a tie or leather lace on the bedroom door handle would _not_ actually stop a child from coming in to play when she heard them rollicking about—Chloe found almost no time to breathe, much less wonder about her partner's unusual behavior over the past month. After all, Lucifer could change like the seasons in L.A., sudden bursts of strangeness, then calm breezes again.

Now, he was leaning against a door post of her open office, arms folded, eyes on her, and his frown reminding her that something had been bothering him for weeks. To a general onlooker, his stance probably looked comfortable, even a little insolent, but Chloe could read something more there: worry, defensiveness, and uncertainty, his mouth a thin line of indecision.

If she had been less angry, she would have asked him about it right then.

But instead, she stood behind her desk, tense and defiant, surrounded by a concerned circle of colleagues. "I am not running away," she snapped, glaring at each of them in turn. Flipping the bulging case file open with more force than necessary, she stabbed at the bearded face in the mug shot with one finger. "This bastard will not scare me into hiding. I'm too close to finishing this."

Hands lifted placatingly, Dan edged forward to perch on the edge of her desk, a move she recognized as calculated to look both casual and comforting. She bristled even more. "Look, Chloe," her ex-husband began carefully. "It's not running away. You know that as well as any of us. It's just a precaution. And just for a couple of days at most."

"I can take care of myself, Dan."

"I know you can," he agreed, but she could see in the tense lines of his face that he was worried. "But we can't ignore this. We'd do the same for any officer. _You'd_ give the same advice if it were me, or Jordan, or Stinner. If you take Trixie to a safe house just over Christmas, I can run things here much more easily. We'll have the whole gang in custody the day after."

"And I can help with bringing the rest of them in," she argued, feeling her mother's stubborn streak stiffening her spine. "Mancini is my case. I'm going to see it through."

"Chloe, you've done enough. More than." Dan pursed his lips, frowning, and she saw his gaze flicker over the yellowing bruise still visible on her face. "Let the rest of us do our jobs now — and you keep our little girl and yourself safe."

"Because of this?" Chloe snatched up the scrap of paper that she'd found on her desk that morning, a pale grey piece of cotton stationery, scrawled across in a sienna brown that looked too much like blood. The handwriting and a scraping of the "ink" were already in forensics, but the phrasing and the manner of delivery left little doubt that the threat came from within the precinct itself. Yet another corrupt cop in the pay of Ray Mancini, the gangland boss Chloe had testified against that morning and whose remaining gang were the target of a sting operation planned for Christmas Day. Tomorrow.

Station CCTV had caught nothing of the person who left the threat, the digital images neatly excised for ten minutes just before she arrived back from the trial. The timing and execution were masterful; the threat brutal and too knowing—her home, Trixie's routine, their holiday plans to see the lights of Grand Park. When she first read the note, Chloe had felt her throat close, her knees turn to water, her stomach suddenly twist in desperate terror. Mancini was well known for leaving a blood-spattered trail of vengeance, for the subtle tendrils and hidden undercurrents of his organization's reach. She didn't doubt the threat was real, but there had to be a better way.

"Yes! Isn't that enough?" Dan nearly shouted, fear cracking his voice. "We don't know how much they know, if they're really inside the department. Chloe, please." He pushed back to look over his shoulder at Lucifer, a too silent, too taciturn figure behind him. "C'mon, bro. Help me out here?"

Chloe thrust a finger at her partner, scowling. "Don't you dare take his side."

"I wouldn't dream of it, Detective," Lucifer answered smoothly. "After all, your offspring has Maze to protect her. As do you."

Dan shoved around on the desk to face the taller man, glowering. "I thought your former bartender was spending a lot of her time with your brother, what's his name, the one who can't dance or drink?" Dan's tone hinted at disbelief, but kept just this side of polite. He and Lucifer had seemingly come to some kind of grudging respect lately. "I know she's more of a badass than she looks, but pardon me if that's not enough for me when my ex-wife and child's life are at stake."

"I can assure you, Daniel," Lucifer replied cooly, pushing himself away from his lounge against the door frame, "The spawn is safer than she's ever been. Hellhounds would be less attentive." He hesitated, looked with that peculiar speculative gaze at Chloe for a long minute. "But then, Maze _has_ been a bit distracted of late thanks to my my brother. Perhaps—perhaps a day or two away from the city wouldn't be amiss, after all?" The last sentence rose into a question, cast toward her. "Detective?"

Chloe had no idea what motivated his change of mind, but she was already shaking her head. "No."

"We _have_ been very instrumental in closing this case, you must admit," her partner continued. Was Dan making little 'keep going' gestures below the desk? "One might even say we deserve the holidays off."

"No, Lucifer. I am not spending Christmas Eve in some safe house." Hands on her hips, she gave him a dirty look. "You can take a vacation if you want, but I'm staying right here and taking the last of these scumbags down. What is it with you? I thought punishment was your thing? Well? There are people to punish."

To her surprise, Lucifer flinched. A tiny, almost invisible twitch of his fingers, a minuscule narrowing of one dark-lined eye. "There are always people to punish," he said after a moment, suddenly stiff and formal. "I would think, Detective, that your top Christmas priority would be protecting those you love."

She fingered the scrap of paper with its death threat, re-reading the schedule of times and movements. Their holiday routine. Trixie's name. The miasma of fear rose again, threatening to overwhelm her, melting her resolve. It had barely been a year since Trixie was kidnapped by another corrupt cop, threatened at gunpoint. She would never have put her job over her child's life then—nor now.

Chloe dropped into her swivel chair and leaned her head in her hands. "Damn you," she muttered.

"Already damned, darling," came Lucifer's swift, soft reply.

"Not you." She looked up at him, at Dan sagging with relief, at Ella rushing around in the background, and the handful of other cops who were trying to protect her from herself as much as from Mancini's agents. "Fine. Fine. We'll go. But if this guy knows all of this," she flicked the scrap of paper across her desk in disgust, "then he might know the precinct safe house list."

"Yeah. Yeah, that's probably right." Dan swore under his breath. "Well, we can work with another agency, arrange something. The Lieutenant will have some connections through other divisions. Maybe—"

"No need," Lucifer said, suddenly brightening into his usual gleeful self. In fact, he looked a little smug. "I know a place."

Chloe looked at him sharply. "You do?"

"Well, there's a certain gentleman who owes me a favor." He shrugged, shoving his hands into his trouser pockets. "He arranges wilderness properties for people looking to get away for a time—or for a good reason. Or a bad one," he added with a sly, widening grin.

Dan grimaced, closing his eyes, and Chloe warned, "Lucifer, I'm not taking Trixie to some kind of Caligulan sex-loft in the mountains."

"Of course not. That would be the chateau just above Santa Barbara. It has one of the most expansive hot tubs in the greater L.A. area, so, it's always quite well-occupied over the season." He quirked an eyebrow at her. "It's a very exclusive Solstice party, if you ever want an invite, but probably not quite what you have in mind for your spawn. No, I was thinking something more secluded seemed like a better option, given our constraints."

"Good thinking," Chloe said.

"Don't sound so surprised, Detective. Some of my own holiday guests over the past several years have preferred solitude and one-on-one attention to the group scene."

"I'll keep that in mind," she replied drily.

Lucifer looked at her, a little too bright. "Will you really?"

Chloe nodded sweetly. "Of course not. Now just make the call, please." She closed the case file with a sigh and rose to her feet. Christmas Eve hiding from murderous gang members in a wilderness house probably used for all sorts of semi-legal and hopefully consensual activities? Sure. Why not? When was her life ever normal? Well, maybe she'd at least get a chance to talk to Lucifer finally about whatever was on his mind lately.

At least, if it didn't involve sex. But what were the chances of that?

* * *

The sun had begun its descent when they finally had to pull the car over. Snowfall had appeared less than an hour out of the city, and the roads grew progressively worse, tire tracks slowly dwindling down to nothing but a clear, unbroken expanse of white stretching up the mountainside ahead of them. As the winter daylight began to wane, the shadows below the trees had lengthened into pale blue and purple ribbons. Beautiful, and cold.

Chloe rolled the sedan slowly onto the rocky shoulder, its city-worn tires crunching in snow that was far deeper than expected, the nose of the car shoving a low wake in front of them. "You know, your guy could have mentioned that the snow was easily two feet deep up here," she muttered, resting her arms on the wheel and peering out into the coming dusk. "And you wanted to drive your little sports car."

"Yes, well, how was I to know Southern California winters could go from a balmy 60 degrees to Judecca's ice fields in just a couple of hours?" Lucifer sounded a bit put out, as if the drastic weather change was an insult directed at him personally.

"Could be worse, I suppose," Chloe said bracingly, glancing down at the GPS map on her phone. "Less than two miles to the cabin, according to this—although the connection is a bit spotty. And given the untraveled state of the roads, the car's unlikely to be disturbed for a few days." She stared beyond the windshield at the solid field of white that had once been a two-lane mountain road winding through trees and scrub and stone. "And I sincerely doubt anyone would follow us here. So, good choice!"

"Are we there, Mommy?" came a sleepy voice from the back. Trixie pulled herself over the cruiser's pleather seat to blink at them, rubbing her eyes with small hands. "Is someone else coming for Christmas, too?"

Chloe gave her daughter a soft smile. "No, monkey. It's just going to be us for Christmas this year."

"Us and Lucifer!" the child added, brightening into wakefulness. "And snow! Oh, look at the snow!" She smushed her face against a window in sudden excitement.

"Yes, snow and Lucifer," Lucifer grumbled, letting his head fall back on the seat with a thump. He heaved a long-suffering sigh. "I hate the cold."

Chuckling, Chloe patted his shoulder. "You insisted on coming with us, as I recall." _And even Dan had to admit that having the other man along was a good idea. Just in case they needed anything. Not that they would. They were perfectly safe, this far off the grid._

"Private cabin in the woods sounded a bit promising, yes, Detective. Warm fires, cozy blankets, a little bourbon in the holiday nog." He eyed her sidelong without lifting his head, and she found her eyes drawn to lean line of his throat, the neat edge of stubble at his jaw, the smooth skin just inside his open collar. She blinked, swallowed, and met his eyes guiltily, but he didn't seem to notice. "Not mile long hikes in frigid wet mush," he continued balefully.

"Yay!" Trixie bounced and bobbled around in the back seat on her knees, looking out every window as if at a magical winter wonderland created expressly for her. "We can play in the snow! C'mon, Lucifer!"

He groaned, but shoved open his door against the snow bank and crunched out into the cold.

They bundled into winter coats from the trunk of the car, stylish gifts from grandma Decker from years ago that had never been worn. Who needed long woolen coats in L.A.? Trixie stuffed her hands into knitted mittens and Chloe dragged a tasseled pink toboggan over her pony tails before letting her scamper off across the white landscape, giggling and singing made-up songs, plunging through the glittering surface of powder with a child's pure joy.

Chloe smiled. Maybe this wasn't such a bad idea, after all.

Shouldering her travel pack and handing Lucifer the heavier bag with a few presents and provisions, Chloe locked up the vehicle and headed uphill, keeping one eye on Trixie romping around them and the other on her phone's GPS. A faint flurry of snow began to fall as they walked, the sky turning rose and grey as clouds gathered. It dusted Lucifer's leather jacket with flecks of white, and he hunched his shoulders and stomped along the roadside, hands thrust deep into his pockets, breath crystallizing in the air. At least he'd had the sense to wear boots, Chloe thought, and not those expensive red-soled dress shoes he usually sported.

After several minutes of quiet walking, broken only by Trixie's excited voice and the occasional soft whump and crack of snow collapsing off nearby branches, Chloe couldn't help but notice that Lucifer had fallen a step behind. She glanced back at him only to meet his eyes, which had once again been lingering on her. His lower lip was caught in his teeth, his eyebrows low, a thin line of worry between them. Seeing her looking, he lengthened his stride to catch up.

"Not too cold?" she asked, trying not to sound concerned. Her brisk efforts to push through deep snow was keeping her toasty warm, so much so that she considered opening her coat a button or two.

Lucifer, however, looked miserable. When he shook his head, a tiny water droplet spattered into the air, gleaming briefly in the evening light. Chloe looked at him more closely. The snowflakes on his jacket and in his dark hair were melting quickly, thin rivulets of water trickling down his neck, dampening his hair, and spotting his jacket as if with dew.

"That's odd." She held out her own sleeve to show the white crystals still perfectly formed. "It's melting on you."

He huffed and shuddered violently once. "There's a reason I like to live in L.A., Detective. Hot-blooded. Devil, you know. Not really fond of the cold." He quickened his pace a little. "Serpents hibernate in this kind of weather."

"Serpents," she repeated, rolling her eyes and shifting her pack to her other shoulder. "Right."

"Mind in the gutter, Detective? But yes, that's trying to hibernate, too, if you must know."

She opted to ignore that comment and, instead, changed the subject. "So, what's gotten into you lately?"

"Bitter cold, or isn't that clear enough?"

"Not that. You were watching me just now."

"I like the view from the rear?" he offered, but the playfulness fell just short of believable.

"Not like that. You've been staring at me for weeks when you think I'm not aware of it. And I get the feeling that you want to tell me something? What is it, Lucifer?"

He looked down at snow-covered ground for nearly a minute, long enough that she thought he might simply refuse to answer. Then finally, quietly, "I want to ask you something, Detective. Just a curiosity, you understand." He slowed, stopped, his fingers catching her lightly by the elbow so that she pulled up beside him. His face was solemn, his gaze more open than she'd seen it. "I genuinely want—need—to know what it is you want in this world. More than anything. If you could have any wish, anything at all, what would it be?"

Chloe was taken aback by the unexpected question. "What? You mean 'What do I desire more than anything in this life?'" she quoted with mock-breathiness and a wry grin. "Haven't we been down that path before? You know that's never worked on me."

Frustration flashed across his face, and she could see the muscles in his jaw tighten over clenched teeth. "No, Detective. Not—not like that. I mean—really. Consider it a game, if you must. If you could have any wish come true, what would it be?"

She stared at him, bemused by his peculiar and very un-Lucifer-like earnestness. He dripped and shivered on the forest road, his wet hair curling forward over eyes that seemed too sharp, lined with intense shadow. "I don't—"

"Lucifer!" Trixie plowed to a halt a few feet behind them and, with a whoosh, flung a snowball at his back. It splattered against his collar with an audible smack, no doubt sending ice inside his jacket and down the back of his neck.

Chloe burst out laughing as her partner gave a very unprofessional yelp and spun on his heels, staring in open-mouthed shock at her own little imp. Trixie bounded away out of reach, giggling madly. Lucifer looked absolutely lost, as if he'd never seen or even imagined a snowball fight before. Given his family life and his hatred of the cold, maybe he hadn't.

Taking pity on him, Chloe scooped up a handful of snow and pitched it after the little girl in a deliberate near-miss. "Oh, this might be war!" she called in an over-exaggerated threatening tone. "And there are two of us!"

Trixie shrieked with delight and grabbed up another double handful of snow.

It took nearly two hours to cover the distance to the cabin with frequent pauses to play and teach Lucifer some basic snowball tactics. Once Chloe accidentally slid down into the snow-filled embankment on her ass, accompanied by gales of laughter from her daughter and a wry, confused, pleased chuckle from her partner. He hauled her back up onto the roadside easily with one hand, and she had stood gasping and clutching his arm while they all chortled together. Standing so close, she could feel the warmth that emanated through his jacket and the faint shivers that ran through him. She hoped he wasn't coming down with something; a sick Lucifer might make for a difficult Christmas.

The final trail to the house was little more than a flattened area that wound up through the trees, probably just a dirt path in the summer, and one clearly not meant for automobile access. A quaint, modern two-story log structure nestled beneath tall, bare trees, flanked by scattering of evergreens. It commanded a stunning view down the steep mountainside to where a narrow creek chattered over ice-crusted rocks and fallen leaves. As they approached through the grey dusk, they could just make out wide floor-to-ceiling windows beneath a peaked roof, stonework stairs leading to a narrow front porch, and what was probably a little shed for tools several yards away from the main structure. They bustled in, flung coats and packs just beside the entrance, and dropped wearily onto the rustic but oh-so-comfortable furniture, Chloe and Trixie both exhausted.

Lucifer headed straight for the massive stone fireplace and within minutes had a blaze crackling in the hearth. He peeled off his damp jacket and vest, rolled up the sleeves of his shirt gingerly as though they, too, were wet and cold, and crouched in front of the fire with his hands extended. Chloe lifted her head, taking in his silhouette against the raging red-gold blaze. "That was awfully fast to get that bonfire," she commented. "I never took you for a Boy Scout. Or whatever the equivalent is in Britain."

"I am will and fire and desire, Detective," he sniffed, without turning around. "Heat and energy are my elements. I told you. I don't suffer the cold well."

Trixie rolled off the sofa like a rag doll, limbs flopping about in the silly way of tired children everywhere, and scuttled over to him. "Can we make s'mores, Lucifer?"

"I haven't the faintest idea." He straightened away from her, obviously reluctant to leave the fire. "What's a s'more?"

Chloe grinned. "So, definitely not a Boy Scout, then."

"Hardly. Please tell me you're not surprised."

She shoved herself upright a little reluctantly and set about unpacking and rummaging through their packs for dinner. "S'mores after turkey sandwiches," she told her daughter. "Come help me find the lights in the kitchen."

After dinner, they introduced Lucifer to the gooey messiness of s'mores. He, of course, hinted at more titillating uses for chocolate and marshmallows, only to backpedal hurriedly when Trixie wanted to know what he meant. Chloe almost choked on a graham cracker trying to stifle her snort at his horrified face. She could swear he was actually learning a kind of basic morals around children. Or was at least trying not to break the Decker house rules too grievously. It was charming, and always a bit hilarious.

Carrying mugs of cocoa stuffed with bonus marshmallows (Lucifer added a hefty dose of top-shelf bourbon to his), they all settled in for a quiet evening, listening to tinny Christmas music on the child's cell phone. Trixie sprawled on the floor by the spectacular window to draw with her crayons, sock feet kicking idly in the air, intent on her artwork.

Chloe watched her, the little form reflected in the cool darkness of the glass. Beyond, moonlight filtered through the trees, scattering long, broken shadows across the snow in a colorless kaleidoscope of darkness and pale blue light. One enormous fir tree, branches heavy with snow and seemingly haloed with white, stood mere feet from the front window like a guardian presence. The wilderness around them seemed utterly still, the familiar susurrus of traffic and neighbors palpably absent. Chloe sipped her cooling cocoa, her feet tucked up on the sofa beneath her, and relaxed to the strains of "Oh Come All Ye Faithful," the scrawling of crayons, the crack and sputter of the fire, the easy rhythm of her own breathing lulling her toward a doze.

Lucifer had taken up a spot on the floor near her knees, his back against the couch, long legs stretched out in the firelight. She thought she had seen him still shiver occasionally, and he seemed magnetically drawn to the warmth of the fire. His wet hair had dried into a tangle of curls, more unkempt than she had ever seen it. Except perhaps that day of the zombie bride murder, a day she tried not to think too much about—his sloppy edginess, his apparent quest for punishment over something he couldn't tell her, something she "would never understand." Something she suspected was related to the death of this mysterious brother or his anxieties about his family. Linda had hinted over wine one night that she should perhaps press him on that front, but the time had never seemed right. With their caseload and the Mancini trial and Christmas and whatever it was between them, she and Lucifer had perhaps had even fewer real conversations these past few months.

She glanced down to again find Lucifer's dark eyes trained on her, head canted so he could watch her from his position. The firelight shifted erratically on his profile and cast part of his face into stark shadow, so she felt as much as saw the troubled weight of that gaze.

"Lucifer." She could reach him easily from her position, could have brushed her fingers across the stubble of his cheek, smoothed his black hair or the lines of his frown.

"Detective?"

Suddenly, she didn't know quite what to ask. So instead she reached for the more immediate issue, the reason they'd come out into the wilds. "We're going to be fine, you know."

"I know." A thread of steel entered his voice. Then that certainty gave way to an almost morose "This time." He looked down for a minute, then pushed himself around to face her more fully, his back framed by the fireplace. "So, tell me, Detective, if you could have anything in this world—reality and history not being impediments—what would it be?"

That question again. Chloe gave him a puzzled look, but he stared back unmoved. "Is this some sort of a game?" she asked. "It's not going to turn into Truth or Dare, is it?"

He didn't huff or laugh or rise to the banter. "No, Detective. No games, no tricks, not for this. I'm quite serious. If you could have anything your heart desires, if you could change any aspect of your existence now or in the past for in the future, what would it be?"

"Um," she stalled, taken aback by a Lucifer Morningstar who turned down the perfect opportunity for innuendo. "I don't know. World peace?"

"Something that is actually about you, please."

"Arguably world peace _is_ about me. But why? I can't actually have anything I want or change my own past. Why even think like that? What's gotten into you?"

He drummed his fingers on one knee. "Can you just ignore reality for once, Detective?" He sounded disgruntled, as if she wasn't playing along just to spite him. "I mean, you might be the least imaginative human I know, but surely there's something you want." A pause. "What if you didn't have to pick one thing? Would you—I don't know—" He glanced around as if for inspiration. "Would you want your diminutive get to grow up to be President? Father knows she couldn't be much worse that the elected one. Or what about a holiday home on the bay? Or maybe to be always safe in this rather dangerous career of yours?" Something in his voice shifted on the last suggestion, but she couldn't quite tell what.

She peered down at him. "I don't think Trix wants to be President—well, not unless it's of Mars. I can borrow the beach house from Mom when I need to get away. And perpetual safety is just not part of the job, Lucifer. Safe cops are probably bored desk-jockey cops. Besides, I don't take risks if I can help it. You know that."

"What if safety could be guaranteed…even if you still worked the same kind of cases?"

"It can't." She placed her empty mug on the hardwood floor, sitting forward where she could see his face better against the backlighting of the fire. "I've never seen you like this before. What is going on? Does—" She thought for a moment before continuing in a rush. "Does this have something to do with your brother's death?"

He jerked as if she'd struck him and looked away. As he turned, the firelight caught briefly in his eyes, a reflected flare of red.

"Lucifer?" Chloe pressed, bending to reach a hand toward his shoulder, then hesitating. "You can talk to me."

"No, Detective," he said, stiffening and still not meeting her eyes. "This isn't about Uriel. Well, not really. Not directly."

"Then how?"

"I know you don't want to believe that your car crash or Kemo bringing ordinance into the restaurant were attempts on your life—"

"Because they weren't," she inserted firmly.

"See?" He rolled to his feet with an almost inhuman grace and began to pace before the hearth. "And this is why I can't talk to you, Detective. Not about this. At least you let me bring you and your progeny here instead of waiting for some gangster to show up at the apartment when Maze was off violating my brother." His voice was bitter, unhappy.

Chloe frowned at him, confused. "We've had death threats before, Lucifer. We've been under gunfire. We've always made it through."

He whirled on her, tension in every line of his body. "But what if— just what if, Detective—you could do better than that? What if one wish, one single wish could secure you, your child, hell, even Detective Douche, if that's what you want? What if?"

"I've never been comfortable with fantasy, Lucifer," she said, shaking her head. "Being a cop, being a mom, means being a realist. I don't wish for the impossible. I work hard to earn the things I can earn, and I try not to angst about the things I can't."

He growled in frustration and turned away, hands gripping the mantelpiece, staring down into the flames.

She tried to lighten things. It was, after all, Christmas Eve. "Well, what about you then? What do you desire most in the world?"

His fingers whitened on the mantle, and he didn't answer.

"Come on, Lucifer," she rose and joined him in the uncomfortable heat of the fire. "Tit for tat, right? What would make you happy in this world?"

He straightened and when he turned, he was staring down at her with that devilish glee that heralded inappropriate comments, but something in his eyes looked strained. "What else could I want? I have a charmed life, Detective. I own one of the most talked-about nightclubs in Los Angeles. Women—and men—flock to my bed. Well, all except for one, that is." He lifted an eyebrow in mock-suggestiveness.

"What would make you happy, Not what would make you horny," she pushed.

"I'm the Devil, darling. I'm always—" He crooked two index fingers in front of his forehead, grinning, pleased with himself despite the distress she though still lay just beneath the surface.

"Happy, Lucifer. Happy. It's really not the same thing. You're not answering my question."

"I know what I'd wish for!" Trixie chirped from between them.

Lucifer started back a very undignified step, catching himself on the mantle before he sat in the fire.

"What's that, monkey?" Chloe crouched to the child's eye level.

"Our Christmas tree." Trixie held up her drawing for her mom to see. A large, multi-colored tree filled most of the page, covered with circles and stars and candy cane ornaments. Dwarfed by the tree were little rough-drawn people. Chloe recognized herself by the blonde ponytail, Dan by his bristly hair, and Trixie by her smaller size and huge grin. There were also three more—one figure looked like it was holding cutlery of some kind, one wore some kind of blobby hat, and the last one seemed to be wearing just a vest and a red devil's tail.

"This is beautiful, Trix," Chloe proffered the drawing to Lucifer who lifted his hands clear but gave it a cursory glance. "Is that one Amenadiel?"

"Yep." Trixie propped her drawing up with sofa cushions, but didn't go back to her spot by the window. Instead, she looked up at her mother, her round eyes a little wistful. "I miss having a Christmas tree. Will Santa even find us here without one?"

Chloe pulled her close and hugged her hard. "Santa can find us anywhere, baby," she assured the child. "Although some of your bigger presents will have to wait until we get back home again, okay?"

"Okay." Trixie nestled against her mother. "I still wish we had a tree."

Lucifer coughed uncomfortably. "There were some garish-looking things in the master bedroom closet that might have once been decorations," he offered, looking awkwardly down at the drawing of the tree. "The lights might set something on fire. They're hardly up to code, I'd think. But we could maybe put a few outside on a tree. If they work at all, that is."

Chloe felt her heart surge with a warmth that had nothing to do with the blazing fire beside her and everything to do with the man now trying to pry himself away from a child's over-exuberant hug. "Are you sure you don't mind going out in the cold again? Is your coat even dry?"

Lucifer shrugged awkwardly when Trixie bounded toward the bedroom to find the promised lights, brushing his trousers as if trying to remove pet hair or cooties. "It's not as if I'll die from exposure. Still immortal. Mostly. I think."

The lights turned out to be a mismatched Gordian Knot of indeterminate age and seemed to include only one strand of any one shape, color, size, or style of lights. Trixie was delighted by the treasure trove, and Chloe secretly hoped that they didn't actually burn down the tree, the house, and the shed. It took less than an hour to rustle some of the snow off the giant fir tree in front of the window and wrap its branches in far too many swags of patchwork lights. As the tallest of them, Lucifer tossed lights about half-way up the tree at Trixie's request, while the child ran round and round. They couldn't reach the top, but made up for it in enthusiasm (tentative and shivery from Lucifer) and the sheer density of lights. Chloe located an outdoor extension cord in the shed and a power outlet built into the outer wall of the porch, and was graciously allowed to do the lighting honors once the decorating was complete.

Standing on the stone steps in the moonlight, the three of them watched the tree flare into glorious, mismatched, multicolored light.

Trixie cheered and jumped around in the snow like a rabbit for nearly 20 whole seconds before something sparked, fizzed disconsolately, and both the tree and the entire cabin went black.

"Oops," Trixie said. And giggled in the sudden dark.

They found the breaker box just inside the door, but everything seemed in order. "Huh," Chloe said. "At least we have a fire. And the beds have plenty of blankets. No, Lucifer. It's not cold enough to need to share body heat. No, Trixie, no one's explaining that to you tonight. In fact, I think it's time for bed."

Lucifer lurked around the fireplace trying to warm up again while Chloe tucked Trixie in for the night, made sure she had layers of cover, told her a quick version of Rudolph, and kissed her on the forehead. "See you on Christmas," she murmured.

Happily exhausted, Trixie burrowed down into her blankets and turned over immediately to sleep.

When Chloe returned to the big front room, Lucifer was sitting on the hearth with the arch of his back almost against the leaping flames, staring at the screen of his phone.

"Waiting for a call?" Chloe dropped onto the end of the sofa, feeling pleasantly tired. The heat from the fire was extraordinary, almost too much even from several feet away. How Lucifer could stand to be so close boggled the mind. "Do you even get service up here? Mine's spotty at best."

"Checking the time, actually," he replied, placing the phone on the hearth beside him where he could see it easily.

"Expecting Santa on a particular schedule?" she teased. "He's never been that prompt at our house." When he didn't respond, she watched him for a minute. Head down, hands clasped loosely between his knees, he seemed lost in thought. "Hey," she tried gently. "Penny for your thoughts?"

He answered with evident reluctance. "I'm making a decision, Detective. One that's taken—well, let's just say it's taken me rather more than your lifetime. Almost an eternity, in fact."

"Uh-huh. You're not that much older than me, you know."

He lifted his head, mouth twisted in a wry smile. "Can I tell you a Christmas story, Detective?"

Puzzled but curious, Chloe shifted around until she was more comfortable, propping her feet up. "Of course. What better thing for Christmas Eve? Although I have to admit, I didn't peg you as a Christmas story kind of guy."

"Wise of you." He settled himself with his elbows on his knees, nervously fiddling with his signet ring. "It's a different kind of story, Detective. I'll wager you've never heard it. Humans imagine Christmas is about a child of God, a hope of transformation, a special gift to humanity. But your scriptures get it wrong. The truth—." Lucifer looked down at his hands. "The truth isn't quite so happy or so pure and good. Things rarely are, I've learned."

Chloe pulled one of the decorative pillows into her lap, arms around it in a loose hug, and rested her chin on one edge. She watched him carefully as he spoke and paused, the shadows of his face hard and moving oddly with the flames behind him. For a moment, she could almost believe he was some sort of hellish denizen, come salamander-like out of the fire to tell her a story. Which was crazy, she told herself. Fantastical. And Chloe Decker didn't live or believe in a fantasy world, even on Christmas Eve.

"Once, an angelic child of my Father's grew restless and annoyed with his lot," Lucifer began, voice low, barely above a whisper. "He was the youngest son, rebellious by nature; the son who had been given authority over the shaping of stars, bringing light to the cosmos, and who was eternally at odds with his brothers and sisters. This son was not content with his gifts, neither his wings nor his light nor his prescribed role in Creation. He demanded to have what his Father had granted only to his newest and most finite creations. Humanity alone had been permitted the freedom to choose good or ill, to think and act outside of the bounds of Father's determinations. And the angelic son wanted that quite badly."

"Free will?" Chloe clarified when he paused.

"Yes. But free will hadn't been meant for immortal children, only for those of limited span. When his demands went unheard, the son brought dissent to the Silver City and, in due course, was punished for his effrontery."

As he spoke, Chloe noticed that he had started shivering again, even with the raging heat behind him.

"So, the rebellious angel fell, cast from his Father's presence and plunged into the depths of another plane entirely—a place of darkness and red sands and barren stone, where the hordes gibbered and fought with others even less fortunate in his Father's designs. Trapped in these confines, the son was granted his demands, given free will. He was given, too, something he would have never wished for himself: dominion. Forever forward, he would hold sway over others who shared the affliction of free will and learn first-hand why Father had become unhappy with his experiment. As the corrupted souls of humanity poured into Hell, the fallen son was left to discover the horrible ramifications of freedom of choice and to devise punishments.

"Scorched and scorned by his kind, the angel became the Devil, Punisher of those who elected evil, who turned freedom into misery and greed. At first, he justified it. These humans had taken the greatest gift his Father had bestowed and made it a mockery. Later, over centuries, he learned that free will, when connected to the inevitability of Father-damned consequences, was no free will at all. The experiment was broken from the beginning, false hopes, unreal, the ultimate bait and switch." The bitterness in his voice was scathing, half-loathing, half-fury.

"From the depths, I—he, the son, the first of the fallen, raged and burned. And, in time, perhaps as a reward for his service—" he spat the word, lip curling to show white teeth, "—his Father gave him one respite. To the Devil, it felt like another blow, a counterpoint that made his torment all the more painful with its breath of hope." He stopped, took a shuddering breath.

Chloe slid closer to him, suddenly needing very much to know. "What was it?"

Again, the firelight touched his eyes as he looked over at her, a sheen of orange-red sliding over dark irises. "One night each human year, the Devil could choose to discard his mantle as a punisher and instead act as the angelic force he had been meant to be. The given night has changed over the millennia, but for over two thousand cycles of your calendar, the date has been Christmas Eve."

He looked down at his phone to see the clock again. "On this one night, the Devil could grant a boon to one tormented soul, fulfill a single desire in full and in truth, and take upon himself the consequences of that wish. The soul would continue its journey none the wiser, living out the Devil's Wish and never feel the burden of gratefulness or even realize its trajectory had changed."

 _If you could have anything in this world_ — _reality and history not being impediments_ — _what would it be?"_

"Is that the end of the story?" She could feel in her bones that it wasn't.

Lucifer took another deep breath. "Almost. You see, Detective, the Devil didn't want such a gift. It seemed an insult, a reminder of how much he'd lost. Besides, what soul in Hell could be trusted to wish for something worthy? How likely was it that such a soul would wish for the end of Hell or the destruction of Heaven or would even wish away the Devil himself?" A pause. "Perhaps that is what he should have encouraged."

"No," she murmured, almost without thinking.

Abruptly, he stood and stretched a trembling hand out to her in invitation. When she took it, he pulled her to her feet and close, staring down with the weight of millennia in his gaze. "But the Devil's not in Hell anymore. He took his free will and cut off his wings. Just when he discovered how to spit in his Father's all-seeing eye, he found that there was a soul to whom he would grant such a wish."

She nodded as if she understood, as if this whole story wasn't some kind of dark make-believe that was stealing the air from her lungs, making the room seem hot and close and surreal.

"Detective, you—you could wish for safety for yourself and your spawn, you know. For Palmetto and for Malcolm to never have happened. For your marriage or your childhood or—." He swallowed. "Or your father's life. Whatever changes, whatever the consequences, they will only be good for you. You have the Devil's own word for that."

She felt tears prickling at the corners of her eyes, his words conjuring memories she'd tried to bury deep. Trixie's tear-streaked face in the airplane hangar. Her father's warm laughter over breakfast. Dan's hand in hers when they stood before the altar, and so much more. The memories and possibilities swamped her, a tidal wave of emotions, and she reeled under the assault failed hopes, lost dreams, and eternal uncertainties. Lucifer's too-warm fingers held her upright, her forehead resting against the buttons of his shirt.

"Detective? We have only minutes left." His voice seemed to come from a great distance, a low echo off ancient pagan stones. "Please."

Swallowing hard, she asked, "How—how do I—?"

"Close your eyes."

She obeyed, eyes fluttering shut as if at an irresistible command.

"Without speaking, make your wish. I do not need to know it. But you must try to believe."

She did.

As the words flickered through her mind, she felt his hands lift to frame her face, warm, gentle, and suddenly as steady and as inexorable as time. His fingertips were smooth, tough with pianist's callouses. When his lips brushed hers, they were featherlight, and Chloe leaned in to meet him. Lucifer's mouth moved against hers without demand, the exhale of his breath shuddering into her like a prayer.

And every hair on her body lifted as the sudden frisson passed through her, like the aftermath of a chill, the dawning of exultation, or some yet-to-be-experienced ecstasy. Chloe gasped, her eyes flashing open to see Lucifer turning away, blocking his own eyes with his hands. She tried to speak his name, but her voice emerged without sound, a desert wind, and she had to gulp down the dryness in her throat before trying again. "Lu—Lucifer?"

"Stay there, Detective," he answered, his own voice a brittle rasp, turning his back to her and stumbling toward the outer door. "I just need a minute to—just a minute—"

Head down, he blundered outside onto the dark porch, the door standing open behind him.

The frigid gust of midnight air in his wake shocked Chloe back to herself.

It had to be the heat. The fire was too damn hot, and it was playing tricks with her awareness. She could have almost sworn something strange (something utterly uncanny, impossibly wonderful) had just happened between them, but of course that was crazy, as delusional as he was. Caught up in Lucifer's storytelling, she had allowed herself to be lulled int —well, a kiss, of all things! The most un-Lucifer-like kiss she could imagine. Tender and chaste and yet … She touched her lips in surprise and stared at the empty doorway.

Chloe found him leaning against the porch rail, staring up at the blue-black sky between the treetops and apparently recovered from whatever had shaken him a few moments before. Stepping up next to him, she bumped her shoulder against his and looked out into the yard, past the big quiescent tree. They stood silent for several minutes, their breath steaming in the air, before she finally got up her nerve. "I've been wondering if you would ever do that."

He looked down at her sharply. "Do what, Detective?"

"You didn't need some big story to justify it, you know," she continued with a blitheness she didn't actually feel. What was she doing? She'd put off his advances for almost two years, and now here she was.

"Justify what, exactly?" He sounded perplexed.

Chloe bit her lip, and, decision made, she turned into him, rose up on her toes and seized his collar to pull him down to meet her. "This, stupid." She kissed him.

For a split second, Lucifer froze. Then his entire body relaxed against her, hands sliding down her shoulders, and he bent hungrily into the kiss. Only to break away before she had a chance to deepen it. He stared at her, looking wild-eyed and out of breath. "Believe me, Detective, there's nothing I want more than this but—I can't."

She gaped at him. "What? Why not?"

"It wouldn't be fair." He pushed his fingers through his messy hair, clearly torn. "Dr. Linda says I should just show you, so you'd know and could make your own choice."

"Um, I think I'm pretty clearly making it here."

Shaking his head, he rushed on a little desperately. "I can't believe I'm saying this. Detective, you don't have all the relevant facts, although I've tried to tell you. You really don't know what I am. What I've done."

"Then tell me!" Exasperated, she nearly shouted into the still, cold air. "What the hell, Lucifer? Why won't you talk to me? And not in riddles and stories!"

"That's just it," he said, folding his arms over his chest defensively. "I've told you time and time again, and you don't believe me. And, frankly, I can't show you the way I showed my therapist; especially not up here in the middle of nowhere. What if you're terrified and want to take Beatrice and leave? What then?"

"I'm not going to want to leave, Lucifer."

"You really don't know that, Detective. And while I don't expect Mancini's lackeys to find you up here, a two mile trudge in the snow believing the Devil might be at your heels is a bit much to ask of someone you . . . Of you. Or your child."

Chloe leaned against the wall of the cabin, head thrown back against the icy logs. Why was nothing ever simple with Lucifer? "Wait. Didn't you say the soul gifted with the Devil's Wish wouldn't know they'd made a wish? How does that work, exactly?"

He frowned, confused at the sudden change of subject. "The soul forgets after the bargain is sealed," he finally answered. "Although I've never tested it to be certain. And never on a living soul. I expect when you sleep, you'll forget part, perhaps all, of tonight." His eyes widened in dawning comprehension.

"Well, Linda says says you should show me. She's been good for you, and she's a friend. Why not take her advice? Show me."

"I don't think so."

"If you're actually the devil incarnate, I'm going to forget anyway, right?"

"Detective, this isn't a good idea." But she could hear a strain of eagerness under the hesitation in his voice, see a glimmer of hope in his face.

"Whatever this devil thing of yours is," she pressed, determined now, "I swear I can handle it. You trusted me to make the wish, damn it. What's so hard about trusting me with this?"

He held up a finger. "Wait here, Detective." And he vanished into the cabin for a minute, returning with the sedan keys and holding them out to her.

"What's this?"

He rattled the keys. "A way out."

"I don't need a way out." But he kept shaking them in her direction stubbornly until she sighed and stuffed them in her jeans pocket. "Fine. Now?"

"Where's your gun, Detective? I assume you brought it."

"In my coat, where it should stay. I don't want my gun, Lucifer!" she called after him when he darted back through the open door into the dark cabin. When he returned, he proffered the coat, and when she refused to take it from him, he draped it beside her on the porch rail.

"Check that you can reach it, at least. Come on, Detective. Humor me."

She pulled the holstered weapon out and laid it on top of the wool. "Good enough? I'm armed and have access to a get-away vehicle. This is crazy, you know."

Lucifer stepped down into the snow, his boots crunching through the ice crust that had formed since they arrived, and looked up at her. "I need to you know that I have never lied to you, and I am not lying to you now. If you tell me to leave after this, I will. No questions, no complaints. Do you understand? You are perfectly safe."

"I know that—,"she began.

He cut her off with a fierce wave of one hand. "I should have said these things to Linda. Should have done things differently. I'm trying to get this right, if you'll just bear with me."

"Lucifer," she sighed. "I get it. I'm good. Really."

Backing away from her, he passed into pale moonlight, then nearly disappeared beneath the shadow of their giant failed Christmas tree. When he spoke again, his voice seemed different, deeper, a rumble of winter thunder. "Before I was the Devil, Detective, I was the Lightbringer. And I think, just maybe, I still am in some small way."

He lifted his hands in the darkness, and suddenly they were full of starlight. Blue-white fire fell from the sky as if called. It pooled as liquid flame in his palms, licked over his fingers in spirals and storm waves, tiny solar flares erupting into the icy air. Smiling, his face ablaze with an almost-forgotten joy, Lucifer Morningstar curled his fingers around the light, shaping and bending it to his will with the balanced, fluid gestures that once set universes in motion. Finally, with a soft puff of breath, he blew on the fire in his hands, and it shattered, spraying the tree with millions of cold, clear pinpoints of light. From its tip to its base, the fir tree glowed with an unearthly beauty, unconsumed and alive, filled with a night sky full of miniature stars.

Chloe stared.

Lucifer looked back, waiting, his eyes burning with infernal flames.

"Oh," said a small voice behind Chloe, a soft gasp of delight and amazement. Trixie stood in the open door, blinking muzzily up past her mother at the tree of blue fire. "So pretty!" Her little hand slipped into Chloe's, still warm from her blankets. Tugging insistently, she pulled the detective out of a kind of amazed stupor and down into the snow.

Chloe stumbled a few steps, her feet numb and catching on the newly frozen ground. When Lucifer caught her, moving far too rapidly, his eyes were once again black as pitch and worried. "Detective? Are you . . . okay?"

Holding onto his arm as she had on the roadside that afternoon, she found her voice. "That's quite a light show." The quip fell flat, but her voice was surprisingly steady. "Is it like the blood pack when Trix was kidnapped? You ordered a special effects team to set this up before we arrived?"

Even before he answered, she already knew the truth. "No, Detective."

All this time. All the things she'd seen and been able to justify or ignore. All of it, true and real, just as he'd said. Lucifer was the Devil. Her partner was the actual Devil. Fallen angel, son of the God she didn't believe in. The Devil had brought her and her child to the mountains on Christmas Eve to protect them from bad guys. He'd saved her before, and Trixie, too. He'd died and "got better." Tonight, he had offered her the greatest gift he had ever bestowed, and had even made sure her child had a Christmas tree.

Maybe it was okay that she didn't believe. Clearly, the mythology she'd learned in church as a child got some things wrong.

Smiling brilliantly up into her Devil's cautious face, she pulled him down into another kiss. This time, he didn't resist.

"Ooooo!" Trixie squealed from where she was skipping around the starlight tree. "Mommy's kissing Lucifer! And we have the best Christmas tree ever!"

* * *

Late that night, when Mancini's thugs crept toward the cabin, they were met by a figure out of nightmare, shaped like a man but with gleaming red eyes and a roar that sounded like the boom of a million cracking ice floes. Fingers of shadow ran before him across the ground as if alive, and even the cold glow of the single outdoor Christmas tree dimmed ominously in his wake. Forgetting their guns and knives, forgetting even to scream, the men fled back down the mountain in a fraction of the time it had taken them to climb it. They scrambled into their SUV and, oblivious to the icy roads, careened back into town, snow flying from beneath their wheels, hearts racing, bodies shaking as if they would never be warm again.

When Dan called the next morning, he barely remembered to say "Merry Christmas" before plunging into a miraculous tale about how Mancini's gang had turned themselves over to the LAPD in the wee hours of Christmas morning. "I swear, it was like they met the ghost of Christmas future or something," he said, his amazed voice thin and distant over the cell phone's speaker. "Drug-addled, I guess. But whatever the reason, we've got all of them now. You guys can come back!"

"Yeah, come back," said a grouchy Maze voice over the phone a little while later, after Trixie had torn through her smaller gifts with glee, gulped down a little cereal, and ran outside to play in the frozen snow while she could. "People think all these stupid decorations are mine when you're not here. You're ruining my rep, Decker. Get your ass home."

"We will,' Chloe told her, warming her hands in the pockets of her coat. Even with the fire blazing away, the powerless cabin still felt chilly in the early morning.

Lucifer had been quiet since they awoke, offering Christmas greetings reluctantly and trying to look pleased when they heard the news about the gang. He was somehow as coiffed as if he had spent the night at his penthouse, three-piece suit crisp beneath his leather jacket. But his unusual somberness made him seem dark and perhaps a little sad. Huddled into his coat, arms crossed tightly for warmth, he stood on the porch with Chloe and watched Trixie's antics at the base of the massive fir tree. Above the child, the tree's dark branches glistened with golden morning sun. The strands of the burned-out lights they had wrapped around it last night now drooped under a sheen of ice, frozen in place, dim and empty. Here and there, cold water trickled down, pattering on the snow crust below as the day started to warm.

"Lucifer! Lucifer!" Trixie called, jumping up and down around the tree. "Come make snow angels with me!"

Chloe saw him grimace.

The child found herself a deep snowdrift and spun back towards the house to wave and bounce to get the club owner's attention. "Look! It's really, really easy! All you have to do is find a spot you like, spread your wings—" She flung her arms out to the sides, grinning. "—and fall!"

As the child flopped backward in demonstration, Lucifer made a low, pained noise. Instead of watching the child flailing her arms happily in the snow, he fumbled in his jacket for a cigarette and lighter which stubbornly refused his every effort to make it light. Frustrated, on edge, he started to fling it into the woods, but Chloe caught his hand, took it from him, and flicked it into flame. "Here," she said gently, holding it for him.

His hands trembled a little as he lit the cigarette, and he looked ashamed and disgusted but grateful nonetheless. He drew deeply, the cigarette tip flaring crimson, and exhaled frozen steam and smoke in a great sigh.

Chloe tucked her arm through his and pulled him close, earning herself a slightly surprised glance. But she noticed that he didn't pull away. "You know," she said, "I seem to remember you telling me the most amazing Christmas story last night. Something about a Christmas Eve wish and, of course, the Devil."

He grunted, a noncommittal sound, and lifted the cigarette to his lips again.

"It had a sort of sad ending, I think. Which is strange for Christmas stories," Chloe continued, leaning her head against his shoulder comfortably and receiving another questioning look. "How did it go again? The soul granted the wish doesn't get to remember all the Devil has done for her. After all, he's the Devil, and good things aren't supposed to be his lot."

"Yes, Detective," Lucifer said wearily. "I know. Are we about ready to leave? It's bloody cold up here this morning. And there's a long walk back to your car."

"Unless," she kept talking as if he hadn't interrupted "Unless perhaps that soul wished for the Devil's own happiness. And that wish apparently means that she needs to remember everything."

The arm beneath her cheek stilled, frozen like the tree and the lights and the crusted snow. She tightened her grip a little, rubbed her face against his shoulder before looking up at him.

He stared down at her, dark eyes wary and painfully hopeful. "Detective—" His normally smooth, sophisticated voice cracked. "Chloe—?"

"Merry Christmas, Lucifer," she said simply and smiled.

* * *

Final Author's Note: I don't usually write romance, even though I cheerfully ship Deckerstar. Would love to know how I did. Also have been jonesing to write "Chloe gets a clue" since I'm still a long way away from it in my current WIP. Might have stolen my own thunder a bit here, but … well, it's for Christmas. Happy holidays, everyone!


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